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Creation Station

Health and Sanctity of Life

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis

Every woman who has given birth in the last century owes a huge debt of
gratitude to a doctor born in 1818 in Buda, Hungary and who died insane
because the scientific world refused to accept his simple solution to a
medical problem that was killing thousands of women every year.

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was born July 1, 1818, and received his MD in
1844 in Vienna, where he was appointed to be an assistant at the
Maternity Hospital. The hospital primarily served poor women or women
in extreme circumstances, such as illegitimate births. Very soon,
Semmelweis became distressed at the number of patients who died from
puerperal infection, commonly known as childbed fever. Healthy women
would come into the clinic, deliver their babies and, within a few
days, be dead from childbed fever. Women who were able to give birth at
home rarely died of childbed fever, while the disease was rampant in
maternity hospitals all across Europe. The situation was so desperate
that women would beg to give birth in the streets and be admitted to
the hospital after the delivery. For some unknown reason, admission
after the birth led to fewer deaths. Women who were forced to enter the
hospital before delivery lived in a state of fear, terrified that they
would not leave alive.

Most doctors considered childbed fever unpreventable, but Semmelweis's
tender heart was touched by the screams and moans of the dying women,
and he decided to put all his energies into finding the cause and cure
of childbed fever. He spent hundreds of hours autopsying the bodies of
dead patients. After several months, he noticed that the death rate in
Ward One, where doctors and medical students were in charge, was around
29%, while the death rate in Ward Two, where midwives were in charge,
was only 3% (Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co.), p 369. As an experiment, the midwives and
doctors changed wards for awhile, and the same death rates followed
each group. The final clue came when a colleague of Semmelweis's,
Doctor Jakob Kolletschka, received a cut during the autopsy of a woman
who had died of childbed fever. The cut became infected, and Doctor
Kolletschka died in 1847 of puerperal infection. Semmelweis realized
that something from the dead woman had infected his friend, and
therefore something the medical students carried on their hands from
one patient to another was causing the childbed fever. Doctors were
carrying something from sick patients and dead bodies to healthy
patients; men who were dedicated to healing were transmitting the
disease themselves.

To Semmelweis, the solution became obvious. In May 1847, he ordered all
doctors, students and midwives in the hospital to wash their hands
thoroughly in chlorinated water before every examination or delivery.
At the time, doctors usually washed their hands briefly after a
delivery, but after an autopsy or examination of a pregnant woman, they
would just wipe their hands off with a towel and go on to the next
patient. When Semmelweis ordered the student doctors to wash their
hands, many of them became outraged. He had the authority, however, and
under his new rule, the death rate from childbed fever dropped to below
1%. Some of the younger doctors realized that Semmelweis was right
about handwashing, but the more established doctors disparaged his
findings. Many deliberately disobeyed the order to wash their hands,
calling it "undignified". Year after year Semmelweis provided clear
proof that handwashing saved lives, and year after year he was
ridiculed and criticized in scientific journals, and by leading
obstetricians in Europe. He was eventually fired from his job at the
hospital because of his insistence on handwashing, against the orders
of his superior.

In 1861, Semmelweis published his principal work, The Cause, Concept
and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in which he carefully explained,
with years of data to prove his theory, how handwashing by doctors
would save thousands of lives every year. He sent copies of his book to
all prominent obstetricians and medical societies he knew, but the
general reaction was hostile. "The weight of authority stood against
his teachings". (Imre Zoltan, "Semmelweis, Ignaz Philipp", Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1981 ed.) Prominent scientists and physicians, many of whom
had published their own books on childbed fever, actively ridiculed his
ideas. Any doctor who supported Semmelweis's ideas was in danger of
losing his own job.

After years of attempting to persuade other physicians to follow his
ideas, and knowing that thousands of women were dying needlessly every
year, the strain proved too much for Semmelweis. He was admitted to a
mental hospital in Vienna in August of 1865, after suffering a mental
breakdown, and died on August 13, 1865, of puerperal infection, from an
infected cut on his right hand. The same disease he had fought all his
life finally killed him. Semmelweis died feeling defeated by the very
same medical establishment which had taken the Hippocratic oath, vowing
"The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients. . . and
not for their hurt. . ." The people who were supposed to be dedicated
to saving lives were instead more committed to preserving their own
entrenched academic and political interests. Because doctors and
scientists ignored the clear evidence presented to them, hundreds of
thousands of women died needlessly. It took many years for doctors to
become convinced of the necessity for cleanliness. Today, Semmelweis is
hailed as a hero, the "Savior of mothers". But we must never forget how
long and hard he had to fight for his ideas, because they were not part
of the "accepted" science of his day.

Today we see the same kind of irrational refusal by the
scientific establishment to admit the facts from nature that support
Creation. Editor